20 NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



I must here also do justice to the accommodation afforded the passengers 

 by this coach, at this inn, where as good a dinner was provided as 

 hungry people need wish for ; nor shall I soon forget the most excellent 

 leg of the four year old black-faced sheep which formed part of it, bred, 

 fed, and killed by the landlord. It was likewise amusing to contrast the 

 speed with which we had travelled from the Metropolis to York, (two 

 hundred miles in less than twenty-four hours !) with a framed and 

 glazed* advertisement, which hung over the fire-place, informing the 

 public, that " God willing," their persons would be conveyed from 

 York to the Metropolis in somewhere about as many days. The date 

 thereof I do not now recollect. I wish I could continue in the same 

 strain of commendation to my journey's end, for I hate to have occasion 

 to find fault. But picture to yourself a coach pulling up at the cheerless 

 hour of midnight at the end of a journey of nearly three hundred miles, 

 and the passengers shown into a room, in the month of November, with- 

 out a hatful of fire in the giate, and full of foul air, strongly impreg- 

 nated with gas ! Such, however, was our reception at the hotel we 

 drove to in Newcastle, and this too in the very heart of the coal district ! 

 I may, however, have been unfortunate in my day, for several gentlemen 

 to whom I mentioned the circumstance, assured me that in a general way 

 the house in question is a very excellent one, and the private department 

 comfortable and well conducted. Coach Inns, as they are called, from 

 the circumstance of an extravagant rent being given on condition of a 

 certain number of coaches emptying their live lumber into them daily, 

 are, however, generally sad uncomfortable places, and a hint to land- 

 lords to study a Httle more the comfort of travellers, like myself, may not 

 be here out of place. 



* For a copy of this see New Sporting Magazine, vol, i. p. 438. 



